


Goodbye

by indigoat



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, One Shot, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigoat/pseuds/indigoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A piece centred around Tony Stark at Peggy's funeral, because I thought it was unfair that it only centred around how Steve would feel. I've never written for Tony and I've never seen any Iron Man movies so I hope this came out alright. TW: alcoholism/drinking (mentioned briefly).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye

She’s gone, the text said. In her sleep. And suddenly he was gone too, lost in memories.

A science fair at school, fourth grade. His project was on quantum theory, far too advanced for this sort of thing—letting him compete was unfair to the rest if the kids. His project was, clearly, the best in the room; the teacher didn’t even understand what Tony was talking about. When the parents were let into the classroom, and he’d eagerly looked around for his mom and dad. There! He could see his mother, and Aunt Peggy… but where was his father? Tony was sure he would have loved his project. Maybe he was late.

But he wasn’t, he wasn’t showing up, and nothing, not even the blue ribbon—awarded to Tony for first place—could fix that. He sat in the backseat of the car with Peggy, who had her arm around his shoulders. When they got home, she sat on the floor with him and asked him to explain everything, and exclaimed over how clever he was and what a good job he did, but after she left he took the poster into the living room and threw it in the fireplace.

Senior prom. He’d been attending MIT for close to three years and would be graduating with two degrees the next, but a friend of his invited him to her prom, and he figured, what the hell. He wore a nice suit, white, with a salmon tie that matched her dress. He thought maybe his father would stop by, tell him to have fun or congratulate him or remind him to use a condom, but no, it was just his mother and Aunt Peggy, positioning them in front of the fireplace and taking photos, telling them to smile even though inside he was screaming.

Nights when she stayed late at the Stark Mansion (how he hated the name at the time), he would lie awake and listen to his mother and Aunt Peggy talk. Okay, well, lie awake meant lying on the carpet next to the balcony that overlooked the living room where they sat, because the house was too God-damn big to overhear a conversation in a room that you weren’t in. He’d peer over the edge, the carpet scraping against his elbow and cheek, and watch their shadows on the wall, holding wine glasses, talking quietly. They talked about everything—their jobs (they both worked at S.H.I.E.L.D.), men, and in Aunt Peggy’s case, women as well, current events, Tony, and occasionally his father, and it was only ever those times when Tony heard Aunt Peggy criticize him.

Apparently they’d met during the war, his father was a pilot and Aunt Peggy worked with the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Back then, she said, he was reckless and stubborn and arrogant and sensitive, all wrapped up into one. She said she never expected him to stay with anyone and she was surprised and touched that he’d made the effort with Maria, then said, more quietly, that she wished he’d done the same with his son. Then she apologised, quickly, and Tony was creeping away down the hall, thinking of all the times that he’d complained about his father and Aunt Peggy had defended him.

Where’s your shield now, father?

Then he was twenty-one, and getting the news, so formally: we regret to inform you, son... I’m not your son, he wanted to scream. I’m nobody’s son. Nobody’s.

Nobody’s.

At the funeral, Aunt Peggy had held him like a mother would, comforting him even though he could feel her shaking with grief against him. She held his hand through the service, anchoring him when he felt so numb, so separate from his body, that he wondered how he wasn’t floating away from it all, leaving his guilt and his anger and his sadness behind.

And now his anchor was gone. He’d known it was bound to happen, sooner or later. She got weaker and weaker each time she visited, and he left each visit with his eyes a little redder, his heart a little heavier. But he didn’t want it to happen. She was the closest thing he had to a parent, after the accident. She was Aunt Peggy, teaching him how to shoot and how to know when not to, how to talk to girls and treat them with respect, how to do everything. Could he even boil a pot of water without being under her supervision? How was he supposed to go on, all alone?

The funeral was the worst. He watched Rogers carrying her coffin before being flanked by Barnes and Wilson, his eyes red and unseeing. What right did he have to cry, he’d known her for six months, tops. Not like Tony, who’d grown up with her, whose days started when she appeared on the horizon, his sun. How dare they pretend that she belonged to him, that she was just Captain America’s sidekick, when she was so much, so much more—her own woman, her own person. His.

He looked around again. Barton and Banner were sitting together, wearing suits and somberly looking down at their hands. Agent Hill was staring straight ahead with a vacant, empty expression on her face. Natasha, usually so stoic, looked like something had caved in inside of her, and kept rubbing her fingers across a scar that wrapped around her wrist.

The service was hell, and he stayed behind as the crowd thinned, staring at his hands, realising how much he’d aged. Rogers had paused when he’d walked past, but Tony stared resolutely at his feet. Natasha had given him the slightest touch on the shoulder, spy-code, he knew, to say she was there for him. The sound of someone walking over made him look up, at an old, faded man leaning on a cane. “May I sit?”

“Sure.” He moved over and the man settled down next to him, his bones practically creaking.

“I’m Doctor Wilkes,” he said by way of introduction. “I was a friend of Peggy’s, and of your parents. Do you... I don’t suppose you remember me?”

Tony could almost remember a Thanksgiving holiday at their house, with this man sitting between Aunt Peggy and her husband, Uncle Danny, roaring with laughter at something that had been said.

“I think so,” Tony said, then, “I’m sorry for your loss.” Uncle Danny had passed on a few years back. Mister Jarvis and his wife, too. The whole world was emptying until he was the only one left.

“I’m sorry for yours,” Wilkes responded. He closed his eyes as if he were trying to see some old memory again. “Peggy was… she was amazing.”

I know, Tony thought.

“And she had a way of making anyone feel special,” Wilkes went on, eyes still shut. “One of the first nights I was out with her she nearly fought someone for being rude to me because of my race. That was Peggy, always ready to defend someone she cared for.”

Like my dad.

“She—“ Wilked paused, glanced at him as if he were choosing the right words, the ones that wouldn’t make Tony explode like a human time bomb. “She confronted Howard once about you. Said he was never around enough for you, that he didn’t know what he was doing and he’d better shape up. Howard and I… we were partners, you know, science. She confronted him while we were working on something, and after two days of no sleep and just coffee, and he just started talking to me, all these things I don’t think he ever said aloud to anyone else. Said Peggy was right, that he didn’t know what he was doing. That he didn’t deserve her, or your mother, and most of all you. He didn’t know how to be a father. He didn’t know how to be there for you, after so many years of being absent. He said he’d failed you.” Wilkes was gazing off into the distance, his eyes sad, like he could hear a voice in his head, repeating what he’d heard all those years ago. “He said he was sorry.”

He shook himself, then looked at a spot over Tony’s shoulder. “I hope that was… I hope I wasn’t being too forward. I’ll… leave you alone now.” Briefly, he rested a hand on Tony’s arm, then stood up slowly and shuffled away. Tony stared after him, wondering if what Wilkes had said made him feel better or worse.

“That was Peggy, always ready to defend someone she cared for.”

Like his dad, Tony had thought. But not just him; Tony, too.

She’d been protecting him from day one, Aunt Peggy. He missed her. He missed his mother. He missed… he missed his father.

Suddenly he was crying, first silently, then loudly, sobbing, hunched over with his hands wrapped around his chest, trying to keep his heart together…

He didn’t want to be alone. He built a suit out of iron to keep the real world, the disappointment out; he built a suit that feelings couldn’t penetrate, to keep him totally separate, from everything…  
But that wasn’t what he wanted. All he’d ever wanted was someone to say it would all be okay.

He closed his eyes, and he was twenty-one again, old enough to legally drink and sad enough to make his way through two and a half bottles of some fancy alcohol his dad had kept in the basement for special occasions, and he laughed thinking that yes, this definitely was a special occasion, and then he was throwing up in the fancy bathroom, staining the white rug and the white walls and the white tile, and then he was in bed, and Peggy’s voice was all around him, her hand on his forehead, whispering to him.

“It’ll be okay, Tony. It’ll be okay.”

He opened his eyes, saw her looking down at him with her brows knit together with concern, her eyes puffy with grief. Her hand brushed hair out of his face, and she smiled, though her lips trembled with sadness.  
He opened his eyes, again, and he was on his knees, looking through blurred vision at the portrait someone had put up of Aunt Peggy, younger than he’d ever known her, giving the camera the stern look she wore when Tony told her it was pointless, he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t, could not.

“Nonsense,” she’d say, giving his hair a tousle, elbowing him gently. “Tony, you can do anything you set your mind to.”

He wasn’t alone, he would never be alone. She lived inside of him, with his mother, and, yes, with his father too. His mother, the most important person in his life. His father, who knew he’d failed, and felt remorse, finally. And Aunt Peggy, a wrecking ball, tearing down walls, helping him create a path of his own. They were alive inside of him, every breath he took, the blood pounding in his veins, they were there, too.

When he spoke, his voice came out raspy, like he hadn’t used it in weeks.

“Thank you.”


End file.
